India, Sri Lanka, Maldives run scrapped by Greek cruise line: report

Jan 19, 2010 (LBO) – Louise Cruises, a Greece based line which started a service running out of India to Sri Lanka and Maldives was pulling out after suffering losses due to high cost of operating out of Indian ports, media report said.

The company was laying of 200 or relocating 200 crew hired for the South Asian run and its ship MV Aquamarine was returning to Europe. Louise Cruises had lost 3.5 million US dollars in 45 days of operations, the Inter Asian News Agency (IANS) said in a report.

The line had signed a deal with Kerala regional state to operate out of Cochin but were now pulling out, because of high port charges, expensive fuel, poor port infrastructure and “unco-ordinated embarkation procedures”, the report said.

Excessive port charges, refuelling tax, sub-par port infrastructure and unco-ordinated embarkation procedures are some of the reasons stated by the company for withdrawing from India.

“When we started discussing with the Indian government, they assured us of all possible tax rebate for operating here,” the report quoted Yogesh Gupta of Louise Cruises as saying.

“But the slow bureaucratic process and poor government policies have left us with no option but to withdraw

“India doesn’t

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